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Vintage 1960s Era Film Shows IRS Defending Its Use of Computers
coondoggie (973519) writes "It's impossible to imagine the Internal Revenue Service or most other number-crunching agencies or companies working without computers. But when the IRS went to computers — the Automatic Data Processing system --there was an uproar. The agency went so far as to produce a short film on the topic called Right On The Button, to convince the public computers were a good thing."
What was the uproar about actually? Were people afraid the computers would make mistakes and overcharge them or what?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
What else would the public be familiar with computers doing in the late 50's that would help them have context for this decision?
It seems to me that the computer was still an unknown entity to most people at the time.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
For those not interested in helping useless middle-man ad farms, here's the original source on the National Archives website (including the YouTube video):
How Computers Changed the Tax Game
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Damn Revenuers!!!
People hate to see the government spending money on new technology which is why so many places have software and hardware that would have been retired in a commercial environment a decade earlier.
People were afraid of being treated like numbers rather than human beings. It was a very different era.
They will go away in a few years.
I'll say I've found the IRS way easier to deal with then some of the other Creditors I've had. If my wages had kept pace with inflation and I got socialized medicine for my taxes instead of broken down buildings built by corrupt contractors in Iraq I wouldn't even have anything to complain about...
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Ah the good ole days before the IRS collected and data mined all our credit card transactions.
I'd like to see a vid made using the same legacy style and feel to explain the Heartbleed bug.
"No, Heartbleed-related viruses will not attack your physical heart nor your body. However, your devices may not fare so well if you don't take the following precautions..."
Table-ized A.I.
If you're about to say they were correct, hold on a minute. Without the aide of computers, the tax laws wouldn't be this complicated. No human could ever interpret and correctly follow tax law as it sits right now. So all these computers caused it to grow completely insane and waste small business owner's time.
This was the era of excitement about supersonic flight, men flying into space on rockets, and so on. The fear was NOT about circuit boards and software (or vacuum tubes and relays and patch panels), but rather about POWER and CONTROL. People were worried about giving more power to the one part of the US government that, by DESIGN, considers itself above the Constitution and insists the people have no rights.
People were concerned that this would further de-humanize things and further encourage the government to think of the citizens as numbered parts in a machine rather than free people in charge of their government. If you are a free person, the government answers to you, but if the government assigns you a part number, you are just a gear in the machine.... the government that stamped a number on you is clearly your master. When Social Security was created, one of the things critics warned about wasd that the "account number" assigned to each person would, over time, become a citizen ID number that would be used to track people and control and regulate them. The critics were called loony, and the people pushing Social Security made it illegal for the numbers to be used for anything but Social Security (a typical fake big-government advocates like to use to pass bad policy). Years later, government removed the prohibition, justifying the action by pointing out the savings in money and bureaucracy if all of government could use the same unique number for citizen ID. Now, after decades, no American citizen can vote, bank, get a job, etc without having a "Social Security Number" (citizen ID number? part number?) and a person's entire life can be turned upside-down if somebody else starts using that number. The critics who predicted bad side effects of such a system and its assigned citizen numbers, as loud as they were, actually under-predicted what would happen.
This was also a further exposure of the basic lies that were used to create the IRS and the tax system in the first place. When the income tax was first instituted (as a temporary tax to fund a war) the politicians in Washington DC insisted that the tax would only apply to the rich and it would only take 1% of their income. By computerizing the IRS, the government was essentially admitting the lies and preparing to analyze, monitor, and tax the formerly-free people of the United States like never before. Back when the income tax began, people who warned that it would gradually evolve into a tax on everybody and it would inevitably rise to something really outrageous like 5% were denounced and ridiculed. As is so often the case, the politicians pushing thier big new policy were the real liars and the people who sounded like chicken little with their warnings about inevitable growth were in fact not only right but they actually underestimated how bad it would be. The income tax eventually went over 90% for the rich (who bought lobbyists and politicians and got lots of "loopholes" and never actually PAID those rates) and plenty of middle-class pay over 15% (THEY cannot afford to buy politicians to get their own "loopholes").
There's a pattern here for those who care to notice it. The people who keep warning about growing government control over individuals are more-often right than the meat puppets of the growing BigBusiness-BigGovernment enterprise who generally lie to get their way. In 1961, WWII (with Hitler's Germany and Imperial Japan) was fresh in the public memory and Nikita Khrushchev was threatening the west with his Soviet military, so Americans were much more worried about the down-side of big government's potential to number people, treat them as things, and then use them.
I don't know whether there's any causation there or it's mere correlation, but computers really haven't done anything useful for society. Some people enjoy them and they make a few people very rich (if you're wealthy and in computing, you're in a tiny minority), but the overall effect has been retrograde.
When one looks at the use of Offshoring, and Entitlements for Hedge Fund Mangers, Oil Companies, and Tax Havens. One is compelled to ask, "when is enough, enough?"
"This room filled with mainframes can process as many as ten tax returns for every kilowatt hour. The future is today!"
We all know we only have computers because of NASA and space. Although computers can be used to add and subtract vast reams of numbers, back then governments and corporations were too stupid to see this. Only though space exploration do we have the computers we have today. Charles Babbage? Konrad Zuse? All lies. There were no computers before about 1961.
Alan Turing 1941?
John von Neumann?
ENIAC 1948?
Anything?
No?
The amazing thing is that the IRS today is no more efficient then it was in the 1950s before any computerization.
Certainly in 2007 the Australian tax office's internal budget was AU$11.4 billion, or 1.23% of GDP. In 1955 it performed essentially the same task without automation for A£66.7 million which was 1.33% of the 1955 GDP. The difference is not statistically significant. (Normalizing by GDP (essentially the sum of everyone's earnings) accounts for the growing population and inflation.) US figures will show a similar effect.
The only effect of computerization has been to enable the rules and regulations that govern us to become an order of magnitude more complex.
See below for the sad details. http://berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/ImportantThatSoftwareFails.html
To view the video is a security nightmare. The website wants scripts and trash from about 8 other sites. I allowed 4 of them for the cokkie-roulette dance routine - and the number of friends they invited jumped to 100. Link it or lump it. I don't need to see this that badly that 100+ website can have a go at tracking me. BTW there's a credible story around that /. portscans you when you post. Nice.
Pretty sure the only reason we have computers is because they're so good at working out ballistic trajectories. Oh, and of course the Lorenz cypher.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
"Hi!" "Hi there. Says here you're behind on your taxes. I might be able to help - just let the tax man get behind you."
You can see where it goes from here.
Having been the victim of tax identity theft two years in a row, you'd think those computers could be programmed in a way to detect say, multiple refunds going to the same bank account, or the same IP address submitting thousands of returns and shut these thieves down....or *gasp* even perhaps verify the data which is on a return before sending a refund check... You know, to stop the $5 BILLION in tax refund fraud every year....
They appear to still be using those same computers from the 1960s.
"Viewers today are more likely captivated by the refrigerator-size computers and 1960s hairdos." No, the very first thing that struck me was the once-familiar announcer's "authoritative" style of delivery. Among other things, the voice often drops by about a musical fifth on the last word of the sentence.
This is not only standard for announcers (Edward R. Murrow being one example), but you even hear it in movie dialog.
I keep wanting to know some name for the change. It was not instantaneous, but it seems to me that it occurred over not much more than a decade or so. Walter Cronkite had a transitional voice style--somewhere in between what you hear in this movie and a more natural, conversational delivery such as you hear today. (Or, at least, I hear it as natural and conversational--maybe fifty years from now it will sound mannered and affected, too).
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Let me guess, Quantum Conundrum is getting bored of the whole 3D printer shtick and is now trying to troll computer threads?
Go troll /b/.
Turns out I was due a two hundred dollar refund that year. The IRS had a check in my hand within a month for over three hundred dollars - even though the error was entirely mine, my money earned interest while in the government's coffers. Upon detecting my error, the IRS promptly corrected the situation in accordance with their rules.
A tiny, anecdotal example: but I have to say that the IRS is, on the whole, honest. What they do may (IMHO) be offensive, but the agency itself is merely an aspect of the current US Government. It is not inherently good or evil by itself. Closing caveat - this is a personal anecdote, your mileage may vary, past performance should not be taken as an indicator for future performance, etc.
I think I could watch a two hour film of just unit record equipment in action and be happy. Damn stuff was mesmerizing, how it handled, read and punched thousands of cards at ridiculous speeds.
We really did pull off some mechanical genius with this stuff back then. It may be obsolete but it's still cool, and it makes me wonder why we can't seem to design printers that don't start jamming after a few hundred pages anymore.
as they go high rpm, scream to a stop, slowly move, then wham ram up to high rpm in opposite direction. Like rest of the equipment in those rooms, all made of heavy duty steel and cable.
mfwright@batnet.com
Tax his land, tax his wage,
Tax his bed in which he lays.
Tax his tractor, tax his mule,
Teach him taxes is the rule.
Tax his cow, tax his goat,
Tax his pants, tax his coat.
Tax his ties, tax his shirts,
Tax his work, tax his dirt.
Tax his chew, tax his smoke,
Teach him taxes are no joke.
Tax his car, tax his grass,
Tax the roads he must pass.
Tax his food, tax his drink,
Tax him if he tries to think.
Tax his sodas, tax his beers,
If he cries, tax his tears.
Tax his bills, tax his gas,
Tax his notes, tax his cash.
Tax him good and let him know
That after taxes, he has no dough.
If he hollers, tax him more,
Tax him until he's good and sore.
Tax his coffin, tax his grave,
Tax the sod in which he lays.
Put these words upon his tomb,
"Taxes drove me to my doom!"
And when he's gone, we won't relax,
We'll still be after the inheritance tax.
With a computer
And having succeeded, they continue to use those same computers to this day.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"The people who keep warning about growing government control over individuals aren't very well versed in history."
Depends on the scope of the word "history". If you are discussing U.S. politics, then they are quite right and I suspect you are the ignorant one; There have been VERY few points in US history where government control over the individual has reduced (the trend-line has been almost entirely toward more laws, more regulations, more taxes, more monitoring, more tracking, etc). Given that most political discussions in the US are in this context, I'm with the wary people rather than you.
IF you meant "world history", then MOST Americans are not "well-versed". Most Americans care little for world history (which seems not only like old dust-covered books, but also geographically-remote) but they are also not taught much of it in school. It's certainly true that throughout most of world history, most people have been less-free than they currently are in the US, but that's not necessarily due to benevolent leaders in the past - it's more-likely that the primary reason was that past regimes lacked the power and technology that's available to leaders (of all stripes) today. Today's tin-pot dictator has access to technology to oppress his people like never before, and yesterday's dictators were far less oppressive than they could have been had they had the modern capabilities.
Technology is just a tool; whether it does good, or bad, is entirely a matter of the will and actions of the user. When you put more technology into the hands of a growing government that desires to take more resources from its workers, exert more control over its population, and do all this aided by monitoring and analyzing the people, you are taking a big risk and transferring a lot of power. The big question Americans used to ask of government before giving it power, but have failed to ask in recent decades, is this: "How well are you using the power we already gave you?" If the government is mis-using the power it already has and mis-spending the money it already has, then it is idiotic to give it more.
Actually we could work out ballistic trajectories just fine before automated computing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
i'm not saying we couldn't, but it took ages to do by hand and could be error prone.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
So yeah, I kinda do. Especially if you take my health insurance premiums into account.
:P
But as the saying goes, never let a facts get in the way of a good right wing fallacy
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